


Huy to Saint-Quentin, 207 km

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Flirting, Gen, Generation Kill Week, Pre-Relationship, Tour de France
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 10:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11988072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: Ray works in a coffee shop. Nate just wants to find out who's leading at the Tour.





	Huy to Saint-Quentin, 207 km

"You're looking at the paper like you're mad at it, dude," the barista says, as Nate tries to juggle his umbrella and fold back several sections of the newspaper at the same time.

"Just trying to find out what happened in the Tour yesterday, I didn't have time to check anywhere else yet." He gets the paper folded into submission as the barista points at the television in the corner of the cafe. It's showing the Tour. "Oh, hey."

"You got time to sit and watch for a few minutes? They run the leaderboard along the bottom pretty often." There's a hiss of steam as the guy does something with the espresso machine. "I'll run your coffee out when I'm done with it, should just be a sec."

"Thanks." 

The cafe seems to be in that lull between the very early morning crowd, and the folks who work nine to five. Nate was trying to get to the office by eight-thirty, but he'd stayed so late last night that even the subway was mostly empty on his way home, so he knows no one's expecting him until closer to ten. He drops into one of the softer chairs, leaving the newspaper on the table next to it. Everything's fire and brimstone anyway, brinksmanship he can't stand to read about this early on less than five hours of sleep. 

On the television screen, Tom Boonen is in the yellow jersey. The volume is down too low for Nate to hear the commentary, but after a few seconds of following the peloton, the view cuts away to an aerial of some fancy castle, then a outline of a bicycle cut into a field of wheat. 

"You follow cycling?" someone asks, and Nate looks over to see the dark-haired barista setting a paper cup down on the table. He thinks it's larger than what he actually ordered. 

"Mostly just the Tour. I rode in college, but." He shrugs, as if to say _that was college_.

"I had a Huffy for a while," the barista replies. He looks up at the screen for a while. "I can't believe they just whip their dicks out to pee. That's hardcore, man."

Nate smothers a laugh in his cup. "Sometimes they can't stop."

The barista makes a face. Then the bell over the door jangles, and he waves a hand at Nate before disappearing behind the hulking espresso machine again. Nate watches the coverage for another few minutes, and sure enough, the yesterday's results start to scroll across the bottom. So much for his team in the office fantasy pool; he'd put down Hincapie for the stage win. 

The cardboard sleeve slips down his cup when he sets it down next, and he sees the barista had written _TIRED GUY_ , and underneath that, _Contador sucks_. Nate snorts. In smaller letters beneath the barista's Contador opinion, there's _Do you get a lunch break? My shift ends at 11:30._

Nate cranes his neck around, but the barista's still invisible behind the espresso machine, and there are now several people in line, all of them looking cranky. And Nate should probably go to work. 

He doesn't have any paper on him, but someone left a pen behind on the table, and there's enough of a gap above the newspaper's _North Korea Missile Test_ headline to write something. After a moment's deliberation, he prints his name and phone number, and tears off the rectangle. He hadn't left a tip before, so he folds a five dollar bill carefully around the note, then looks back at the bar. The end is open to the left of the espresso machine, and he could probably get away with passing the note around like in middle school.

He almost forgets his umbrella, then nearly crashes into a woman carrying two cold cups, but finally gets into position just as the barista looks up. "Hey, man," he says, grinning at Nate.

"Hey." Nate reaches out and tucks the note into the pocket of the barista's apron, watching his grin widen. "Um, for later? And for the record, I hate Contador."

**Author's Note:**

> Huy to Saint-Quentin was the fourth stage of the 2006 Tour de France, which is what Nate is watching on the television.
> 
> George Hincapie was soon revealed to be doping along with a whole bunch of riders, but I felt like he was the American that Nate would be most likely to root for.
> 
> For GK Week Day 2 prompt "coffee shop AU" & the "au: alternate professions" box on my trope bingo card.


End file.
